Your Week Fun Guide

Some quick local things since I didn’t get to them Friday because they weren’t technically on the weekend:

Remember the contest to win a pair of tickets to see Being Flynn, which includes a Q&A with its star with major NEPA and Pocono roots, Paul Dano. In case you don’t know the name (you should), he was the brother in Little Miss Sunshine who took the vow of silence and the young preacher in There Will Be Blood. So yeah, he’s the guy who got the crap kicked out of him by Daniel Day Lewis (gawd, spoiler!!!!). I talked to him Friday for an interview that will be online Thursday and in Sunday’s paper, and he seems like a good guy who was up to answer whatever I asked him. So it should be a good Q&A session. Except, you know, for the guy who’s moderating it. He might turn the whole thing into a Dumpster fire. It’s me, by the way. Check out the rules and the info on how to enter here.

Random Monday concert over at the Sherman tonight, care of ESU’s Campus Activity Board. Breathe Carolina and The Ready Set are on the bill for CAB’s spring show. Starts at 6, and with this weather, something tells me there will be a happy hour reveler or two out on Main Street before the show. Definitely a new kind of sound for the Sherman, which is fantastic, but, umm, I’m gonna say not exactly my cup of tea. I’m sure that makes me “square” or just simply “old.” But this bubblegum techno rock thing probably shouldn’t be listened to by anyone over 25. But if this is your thing, the Sherman is the place for you tonight!

Wrote about this over the weekend, but it bears mentioning again. Desaki in Swiftwater is holding its semi-annual Martinis and Manicures event Wednesday starting at 5 p.m. all the proceeds benefit Women’s Resources of Monroe County — and there’s no cover/admission, so that’s more money you can use for your martinis and still be helping a good cause. It can be for you too, guys. Just because it’s Martinis and Manicures, don’t worry, a portion of bar sales is going to the organization too. Hearing some of the stories of what women who have been helped by this group have had to go through makes you want to pull out your checkbook and make sure it is well-equipped to help the women that need it.

just looking at this picture, you can hear the background music

It’s one of my favorite pop culture fights, one that’s raged on for more than 40 years and has no right answer, only personal preference. What’s better, Godfather or Godfather II, the latter which will screen at Cinemark Stroud Mall on Thursday at 2 and 7 in a revival/anniversary-type thing. One of the best parts of the argument is your answer can change. When I was in my late teens and early 20s and really starting to develop a more refined love of movies, Godfather was my favorite. I was totally turned off by the Robert DeNiro flashbacks, thought it was too confusing with the flashbacks and thought it was too long. In my mid-20s, when I had seen it a couple times and was getting more interested in character and story, I definitely leaned closer to 2. Now in my mid-late 30s after seeing them both dozens of times, it’s almost a dead heat. It’s kind of like watching the original Star Wars now, knowing we were being duped the first time around. Star Wars isn’t a story about Luke Skywalker — it’s a story about Darth Vader and the Skywalker bloodline. Godfather isn’t about Vito Corleone — it’s about Michael and the Corleone family. When you’re willing to give yourself up to that and realize that Marlon Brando’s unbelievably amazing performance in the first one is just window dressing to the rise and reign of Michael Corleone, you start to lean more toward the second one and start to realize that somehow, the performance of Al Pacino in the second is probably a better performance than Brando in the first when you realize everything Pacino had to pull off without dialogue. Fredo’s betrayal, watching Fredo be shot, listening to Sen. Geary’s BS, bringing Connie back into the family, hearing about how his wife aborted his son — the most powerful scenes of the movie — Pacino did almost all of it without dialogue. It’s remarkably impressive. When you realize the rest of Pacino’s career has been the complete polar opposite of “restrained” then you start to think Godfather II might be better than the first, and that we may not have seen a performance that good since then. You know another good part the fight? You conveniently can forget that Godfather III ever happened. It’s easy, watch … there, I just forgot again! I suggest everyone try it. If this is how you want to envision Sophia Coppola, more power to you, but I’ll take Lost in Translation, thanks.

On to the regular links:

oh matt groening. you're so clever.

It’s never really dawned on me as to why people need to know where The Simpsons is located. That’s the point of naming the town Springfield — there’s a Springfield in every state in the country. It’s Anytown, USA, but instead of making it that bland, Matt Groening decided to put a name on it and chose one of the dozen or so towns you can find in just about every state. Some shows, the setting is integral. The characters of Parks and Recreation wouldn’t work anywhere but in the midwest. Seinfeld couldn’t happen anywhere but New York. On other shows, it’s just there for shats and gaggles. It doesn’t matter that The Good Wife is in Chicago. Or that Breaking Bad is in Albuquerque, it’s only there for the tax credits anyway. It doesn’t matter which state Springfield is — that’s the point. It could be yours, but it doesn’t have to be. And it doesn’t matter if it is or not. So let’s just live with it that way, OK? OK.

Another of my smarty pants predictions — the Hunger Games would still win the next three weeks of the weekend box office before losing to Avengers. We’re one-third of the way there after it won again last weekend, beating out what probably will be its biggest competition over the next two weekends, The Three Stooges. This weekend is almost a given it will win, nothing else might make $10 million. But on the 28th and 29th, that’s the tough one. Pretty tough to see it winning that weekend at this point.

And it’s certainly not beating Avengers the following weekend. It looks like it’s opening huge, and I might have to push back my timeline to see it because the second weekend is going to be crazy crowded too. Maybe when the kids move on to Battleship on the 18th, I can make my move. And just because it’s a day that ends in y, there’s been a new Avengers clip released. We might wanna start asking the question, “Is Samuel L. Jackson cooler as Jules Winnfield or Nick Fury?” It’s still gotta be Jules, but maybe it’s not such a silly question as it would have been a couple months ago.

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